Somewhere amid the rich chaos of the RNA-world, Goldenfeld and Woese wrote, an “operating system” might have spontaneously taken form, by which the more promising innovations arising from random mistakes in RNA self-replication could be communicated and applied. They were alluding to the translation mechanism as seen eventually in cells, by which DNA information is turned into working proteins. At the core of that mechanism sits the ribosome, and at its core, Woese’s beloved 16S rRNA molecule.
